How Does Compensation Insurance Work?

Explaining Worker’s Compensation

Worker’s compensation is a type of insurance that employers are obliged to purchase in many countries. This comes under measures taken by regulatory authorities to ensure health and safety of employees at work.

Under worker’s compensation insurance, an employer provides monetary benefits to a worker who gets injured or disabled due to an accident at the workplace or anywhere where the worker’s presence was in connection with work. The amount paid usually covers all medical expenses, including the bills of doctors, medical procedures or surgeries, medications, therapies or any other item the doctor finds important for recovery. It also covers the transportation cost for visits to and from hospital, doctor’s clinic and/or laboratories.

The timeframe for filing a claim for worker’s compensation after an accident varies. Also, the process is long and requires a lot of paperwork and follow-ups. So, make sure to have a work injury compensation lawyer for your business to deal with such issues.

Furthermore there are insurance companies who specialise in this space and other areas related to personal injury and even death, such as Freedom Insurance. Where an employer based scheme may not cover the injury, these types of insurance companies can.

Worker’s Compensation In Case Of Permanent Injury

Worker’s compensation insurance does not only cover temporary injuries, but also ones that lead to permanent impairment. This comes under “Permanent Partial Disability (PPD)” claims.

Permanent Partial Disability claims are made in cases where the person is not completely disabled, but suffers from a permanent or lasting impairment due to which they either become unable to work or cannot perform the work they were doing prior to the accident.

In this scenario, the employer can make a claim for Permanent Partial Disability under which the employer either has to pay a pre-structured amount, in case the person is unable to return to work, or offer a modified job keeping in view the injury and reduced abilities of the worker.

To determine whether a person is actually eligible to receive benefits, an impairment assessment is generally performed. During this, an approved medical specialist assesses the condition/ impairment of the patient to see if the claims made by the person are true and also, to see which category of impairment the injury falls into.

Common Injuries Reported Under PPD

The injuries most commonly reported under PPD include:

Knee injuries

Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder

Loss of vision (most commonly in one eye)

Nerve damage (especially in neck and shoulder areas)

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

Amputation of limbs, toes or finger

Back injuries. They are most commonly reported injuries when it comes to workers making PPD claims.

Nathan Goodman is the bestselling author of The Jana Baker Spy-Thriller Series. "A terrorist on the loose, a country in panic, and time is running out..." For a free copy of book 1, The Fourteenth Protocol, visit the author's website.